The explosion of vehicle usage in the United States more than a half-century ago has brought tremendous benefit to the ordinary citizen. The advent of the interstate highway system now enables individuals to travel great distances at high speeds in short periods of time. The ease of travel afforded by the automobile and interstate highway system, however, is not without consequence. For most Americans, traffic has become a part of life and a daily annoyance. Indeed, the presence and anticipation of traffic affects ordinary citizens every day in planning travel and the timing of meetings with others.
For several decades, broadcast media adopted the responsibility of reporting traffic conditions over the airwaves such that listeners and viewers could more easily plan travel routing. Though traffic reports historically have been provided only at periodic intervals, given enough advance warning, savvy travelers could plan alternate routing responsive to the reporting of a traffic condition present at a portion of a planned route. Notwithstanding, planning an alternate route remained highly dependent on both the timing of the receipt of a traffic condition report and the knowledge of the traveler of an alternative route.
Global positioning system (GPS) technologies afford a tremendous leap forward in respect to onboard vehicle navigation and traffic condition avoidance. GPS technologies now can be found as standard equipment in many vehicles and provide the previously absent guarantee of alternate routing knowledge for drivers. Current GPS technologies further integrate with over the-air broadcasting of real-time traffic conditions utilizing Internet connectivity so that drivers can correlate traffic conditions in real-time along a proposed route of travel.
Not all traffic conditions reported through broadcast traffic reports reflect a complete standstill of traffic. Rather, in most circumstances, traffic flows in an area of congestion—just not at a high rate of speed. Travelers with advance knowledge of congestion along a planned route make alternate routing decisions based upon the nature of traffic flow. So long as traffic flows at an acceptable speed, albeit not an optimal speed, travelers are less likely to prefer an alternate route. Knowing the rate of speed of traffic in a congested area, however, requires the traveler to rely upon the estimates of real-time broadcast reports over the radio over television resulting from personally observed traffic speeds (typically by helicopter or live camera feed).
In addition to providing accurate information concerning congestion, there is a need to determine when a vehicle is engaged in a traffic violation, thereby endangering others. Conventionally, a police officer detecting a motorist engaged in speeding, reckless driving, or other traffic infraction must pull the violator over to a side of the road to issue a ticket. This endangers the police officer and endangers other motorists. Further, a police department may have an insufficient number of officers to patrol every highway and road to detect traffic law violators.